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February 09, 2005
I disagree
This is a bad idea. A great many Americans don't consider themselves hard partisans, but will eventually decide on a particular candidate for the Presidency from one of the two parties. The path to the Presidency should ultimately be decided by voters working through the political parties, not voters working on behalf of the parties.
Ultimately, candidates are more popular than the political parties they generally represent and it takes a significant amount of support from people who are turned off by partisanship to be elected President, Governor, County Commissioner or State Senator from every state and all but the most partisan districts.
If someone decides they like a John McCain, Howard Dean, Mike Easley or Mitt Romney they should generally be allowed to support them in that candidate's primary -- independents lending their voice should be a good signal to activists that their candidate of choice not only appeals to ultra-partisans but also to the broader population as well.
Besides, if you look at the exit polls for Iowa and New Hampshire you'll see that independents and Democrats were pretty much on the same page.
In Iowa, it appears that some of the indies probably considered the Democratic Party a little too right wing -- Kucinich did 5 points better among indies than registered Dems and Gephardt did 5 points worse. And in NH indies were probably a little righter than the overall electorate -- Lieberman did much better than he did among all Democrats.
But Kerry, Edwards and Dean, the top 3 contenders for the nomination, experienced almost similar margins separating each other among Democrats and Independents. Kerry beat Dean by 11 among indies, 10 among Democrats in NH. In Iowa, Kerry beat Dean by 13 among indies and 16 among Democrats, he bested Edwards by 9 and 10 points respectively.
It is important that we expand our party, not just on the activist level but also among voters who believe in our ideas and candidates and are willing to vote for them but just aren't ready to make the leap and alter their own personal partisan perceptions. Sending the message that in order to support a candidate you like who happens to be a Democrat will require you to drink the kool aid (that's how they see it) is not the message we want to be sending as we're trying to reach majority status.
Posted by Chris at February 9, 2005 06:38 PM
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